US Navy Fire Control Systems - How They Really Work
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Today we take a look at the ridiculous complexity of the USN's WW2 battleship fire control systems with the help of internationally known expert Dr Scholes!
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Pinned post for Q&A :)
What did a 17th century french knight think was the best way to build and destroy a star fort?
why was the US seemingly not concerned by either the Argentine-Chilean naval arms race or the later and larger scale South American dreadnought arms race? Was the US Navy not worried about the South American navies and therefore didn't have any plans to build up their own forces, or did they have such worries and plans and Congress was just too stubborn to release its stranglehold on them?
Given the potential benefit of leaving out a possible source of error, why was the USN so unusual in relying on automatic gun control from the fire control system for much of the war rather than relying on human intermediaries following the output of the fire control system? Was it simply due to a lack of technology from everyone else? And how much of a difference did this end up making in actual gunnery?
America museum "fleet" tries to keep most of their ships in relatively mothball state, to a degree, in case they are needed in the worst case scenario. (Ie Iowas, Midway, and Essexs.)
Do other museum ships in other countries try to keep their ships in a relatively mothball state should they needed?
During World War II it seemed like the US was trying to design ships with as much deck space as possible in order to mount AA guns, radars, sensors, etc. Through this we saw the US standards that survived Pearl Harbor get their funnels trunked. The follow on’s to the Cleveland and Baltimore followed this. As well as the South Dakota class. Why didn’t US designers incorporate this into the Iowa class or some of their destroyers like the Sumner and Gearing? It seems like other nations were trunking funnels on their destroyers especially the Royal Navy but the US seemed fixated on the same funnel design from the Bensons forward. But the Gridley through the Sims had one funnel.
1:11:11
*Battleship **_Texas_** Fire Control:* "Hurry up with the abacus! Chief Wardzynski needs to carve the solution into his clay tablets!"
Its not the best place for this. But my uncle passed last night in his sleep last thing he heard was this video learning more before I go to the navy.. thank you for making him comfortable and giving him something good to listen to in his last moments.
condolences. remember the good times with him...
I offer my condolences.
Condolences
This is a completely wholesome comment that would be welcome anywhere. God bless and my condolences
not gonna lie, if somebody told me the last thing they showed their dying relative was my youtube video, I might just be a little creeped out.
Stuff like this is so technical and nerdy and it's freaking awesome.
Indeed
@@dogloversrule8476 indeed !!!
Roger that..
Three of the most important events in US gunnery occurred before 1921. The first was the proof that with careful spotting and calculations, effective fire could be placed on a moving ship (a radio controlled target in 1912) at ranges unthinkable before director controlled were developed. The second was adopting AC electricity. This allowed for more accurate transmission and response to inputs and outputs within a fire control system, such as own ship data and transmission of firing solutions. The third was the capture or acquisition (by any means) after WW1 ended of German synchronizing motors. This eventually, along with AC, allowed for a faster, more accurate fire control computer (Rangekeeper Mk.8), faster and more accurate transmission of data between director, fire control center and turrets, such that US capital ships after 1937 were equipped with switch boards in the fire control centers allowing any turret or secondary mount to be controlled by any fire control director. Fire control could be switched between the forward and aft Mk.38 fire control directors in minutes. In the IJN, the transfer of control between fore and aft main gun directors started with bringing the turrets back to 0 or 90 degrees and a complex actuation of circuit breakers and switches, taking at least 30 minutes. The synchronizing motors also allowed for the use of remote power control of turrets and mounts from the Rangekeeper or Computer in both train and elevation. The RN did not achieve a similar capability until after the war. The IJN never did achieve RPC on heavy and secondary turrets and mounts.
Another module in the fire control system that was almost revolutionary was the stable vertical (artificial horizon maintained by gyros). Only the USN fully implemented the stable vertical which meant that after 1935 could maintain lock on target when the target and the firing ship turned through 90 degrees at no more than 20 knots. No other navy had this capability.
The adoption of 10cm and 3cm surface search and fire control radars (with sufficient power) meant that at any time in most sea states, USN warships could detect, acquire and maintain target lock over the horizon. At 100 feet above sea level, the visual horizon is around 24kyds. The best the Japanese could do was 20kyds with the fire control mod to the Type 22 10cm surface search sets. The Germans never pushed below 40cm and relied, like the other navies on illumination rounds and searchlights. The longest range illumination rounds (IJN) reached 21kyds and searchlights (again IJN), 8800 yds. The British were one step behind the Americans because their electronics industry just couldn't keep up with demand, so that on a few battleships and cruisers got the 10cm Type 274, most making do with the Type 284M at 40cm. As I pointed out in the post on dispersion, the three rebuilt USN battleships engaged a Japanese battleship at 20-25kyds and could have began firing at 30 kyds. And this was with a modified FCS from Cleveland light cruisers integrated with their Mk.1 or Mk.8 rangekeepers, though they also had RPC. The USS New Jersey was straddling a Japanese DD with HC rounds at the end of the Marshall Islands campaign in January 1944 (IIRC) into a setting sun with both ships on more or less parallel courses at over 30 knots at 39kyds, straddles that would have ensured a hit on a Japanese CA, CB or BB. This sort of accuracy only occurred before the war in fire control exercises by the USN and IJN using aerial spotting at 30kds, both battle lines steaming on parallel courses around 20kts. Both sides even practiced laying smoke screens between the battlelines so that only aerial spotting would be effective (this was another push to increased numbers of carriers and fighters, as the spotting aircraft, types like the OS2U or E7K or E13A could only operate under conditions of air supremacy). The modern US fire control systems allowed the USN to think on straddling and hitting on the first or second full salvo, which they did in October 1944. But the USN actually had this capability for capital ships, starting with the South Dakota II class in late 1942 (the North Carolina class had the complete FCS but was using the 40cm Mk.1 (FA) radar, basically equivalent to the Mk.3 (FC), the South Dakotas introducing the 10cm Mk.8)
Yea but there was another fire control system more advanced than that one in use before the end of the war, the computer augmented defensive guns of the B29, not only did it have to make the calculations from a moving platform to a moving target and point it's guns in the right location so their bullets arrived at the same point in time as an enemy fighter but unlike the MK8 system, which only had to keep track of things in 2 dimensions, the B29's system had to keep track of both the platform and the target in 3 dimensions, and switches could be set at the fire directors controls that would slave multiple gun turrets to a single gunners sight or each gunner could control his own turret with the system making calculations for up to 4 different turrets all shooting at targets at the same time while keeping track of all of it in 3 dimensions from both the platform and the 4 targets, plus it had considerably less time to do it in than the MK8 system did, and being built for use in an aircraft it also had to be a considerable amount smaller and lighter than the MK8 system, it was so effective it gave the B29 a kill to loss ratio against enemy fighter's of 11 to 1, that's higher than the P51's kill to loss ratio of 10.2 to 1 that were sent to escort B29's, for that reason a post WW2 1947 USAAF report actually stated that the use of P51's to escort B29's was a waste of fighter resources that could have been better utilized elsewhere.
And that system was also utilized after the war, in the 1950's it was the basis for the first 3 axis CNC automated production machines that revolutionized the machining field.
Drach and New Jersey - the greatest collab to come out of the 2020s.
SO FAR! AND actually hoping for more of the same!
THAT is a video so technical I'm going to have to rewatch it. When I saw it & started it I had just woke up. And it took a bit for my brain to get acquainted with what I was listening to. It makes me wonder if we have video of these systems actually being used in the past. And I am constantly amazed at how much intelligence goes into making these systems long before actual computer systems were developed. And thought it rather hilarious that modern computers couldn't withstand the shock of the 16" guns being fired. But the fact that they were able to build a machine that could make these calculations and arrive at where the target is going to be when the shells arrive down range almost a minute after they are fired has always been impressive to me. And although the target ship can change course when they see a muzzle flash of the guns firing, if they do so, they will be throwing away their current fire control data & starting over. And considering the spread you get with 9 battleship guns firing, even a small change in course may not throw off the gunnery of the opposing ship. Let's face it, HMS Hood not only did this but did it in a way that would open a firing angle for its aft turret. But in doing so suffered a hit detonating her aft 15" magazine. However, that being said we are not sure if the turn had started and/or how far into the turn Hood was when she exploded. Although Prince of Wales was right behind her POW had to turn to avoid the wreckage of Hood.
I was kinda seeing this comming. Very cool 🙂👍
@@kennethdeanmiller7324 This might be what you're looking for: 1953 US Navy Film: Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers ruclips.net/video/x9YEPw7_YTk/видео.html
Sometimes someone forgets not just how old computers are, but how complex calculation they could do.
When the US Navy was reactivating the Iowa class BBs in the 1980s, there had been some thought given to pulling out the mechanical FC computers in the ships' fire control centers, and replacing them with modern electronic computers. The effort was shelved however, when it was discovered that the modern electronics could not make any substantial improvement on the capabilities of the existing mechanical equipment.
@@DefiantSix And they had to bring back the old crew because nobody knew how to use the computers
I still have my slide rule from high school. My grandkids are amazed by it.
@@DefiantSix That explanation makes a lot more sense that the one given in the video where he sais that digital computers were not shock proof. I would have assumed that by the 80´s there would have been a number of computer systems on board for radar and missile tech that did not die everytime the 16" guns went off.
@@hernerweisenberg7052 They were looking at off the shelf electronics and if you ever had a look inside commercial computers of the era, you would agree that this stuff gets rattled apart if it was to be used inside a car. Had they went with a proprietary electronic solution to deliver both better performance and ruggedness, it would have taken a lot longer and cost a lot more for a temporary reactivation. Hence why, sticking with the analog computer was the only viable option.
I remember reading that while the US battleships were still in service, a great deal of research was done on eliminating gun dispersion with computerised models and the best sensors available, but it turned out to be an intractable problem - some dispersion was inevitable.
Some dispersion would occur just based on burn rate of the powder charges. Shoot even small batches of even pistol or rifle ammunition and you will get variations in burn rate or powder weight even out of the same box. Now make those shots and charges 10,000 times larger.
That makes sense, even if you could compensate for minor differences between individual guns, you're still dependent on the consistency of your ammunition. Look at Italian battleship gunnery in WWII.
When the computer to calculate the trajectory of your shell is bigger than your ships, you know it's time to just eyeball it.
Bear in mind that for artillery pieces every single shot is logged and detailed records kept, so that the barrel liner wear and other details can be fed into calculations for the next salvo. Every single gun tube has its own history. This is true for land-based towed artillery such as the M-198 155mm howitzer as well as naval guns.
You NEED dispersion. You are not firing 1 rifle bullet, you are shooting a cluster.
ROFL at 13:35 I had tabbed out but was listening - I tabbed back in and saw that bridge - but for a moment i genuinely thought "that is the most stupidly designed antenna I have ev... oh. oh." :D
A whole hour of "Oh wow!" details {I *am* an engineer so I shall use that as an excuse :)}.
For me, the thing that I think impressed me more than anything else was the fact that the range finder builders had to manufacture to such fine tolerances AND have the materials science filed to such a point that they could build in allowances for temperature changes!
I know there are some of your viewers who might consider this video a bit too technical or even "dry", but I found it truly facinating. I have played the old warship simulation rules like Seapower and Seapower 2 and they give a basic idea of the difficulty of two moving objects trying to hit each other. One factor they do not address at all, is sea state. The system for determining true vertical whether by pitch or roll makes so much sense to me now, but I never thought of it before. I know age of sail ships had to take into consideration roll as it would affect the angle of the guns but it was done by the gunner's skill and experience. Bravo!
A friend's father was an ensign aboard a Gearing class DD near the end of WWII. They were testing a new fire control computer prototype on a deserted island near Cuba one day. Unfortunately, there was a bug in the computer. Instead of averaging the rangefinder results, the computer added them together. They missed the island. Thank goodness for QA...
In "The Night The Giants Rode" over at Unauthorised, Bill relates that he was trained on the Submarine equivalent as a young officer. And that when they got the electronic computers instead of the analogue ones; the latter did not have enough computing power to achieve the same precision.
In the same sort of vein, I had the opportunity to tour the Missouri out at Pearl. The guide there told us the Navy tried to use digital computers back in the '90s to replace the mechanical fire control computers. They found that the main battery would destroy the digital computers whenever the guns were fired.
@Fitzwalker
Just another case where newer isn't necessarily better.
@@Fizwalker i just watched something about permissive action links in u.s nuclear weapons involving hard links and soft links. the original soft links have long since been replaced by integrated circuits on silicon wafers but the hard links are electromechanical in nature to this day. edit: the channel is called new mind - pretty good imho.
I guess those were special out-of-date military models? (Electronics used by the military and eg NASA or in aviation are often quite a bit behind civilian models. Partially because they need to be more rugged, partially because getting anything approved and procured takes a while.)
some stuff is painfully way behind the civilian world, but some stuff is leaps and bounds ahead of it too.
I did a lot of work on Counter battery RADAR in the 1990's Which would track a shell in flight, and would project back to the launch point so you could shoot back before the original shell landed. It also predicted the landing point, so you could warn people to move out of the way.
Do you know if any of the calculations used go back to this system?
@@dukecraig2402 The Math Predates the Navy at a Theoretical level, the Implementations earliest root trace back to work at MIT Lincoln Labs.
The system I worked on in the Mid 90's was for a Stationary Army/Marine counterbattery system. You would stop oyour truck scan for a while and move. Since they wanted absoult ecoordinates they needed to know the position exactly, with modern GPS and Inertial navigation, newer systems can track while moving. The Ship just needed relative coordinates.
Your use of a shell is not correct. When you should have used a projectile. You do not have a shell on a battleship. Where the 5"-38 calber did have a shell the semi fixed powder case. The propellent are in bags.
That’s awesome, all of this stuff is fascinating to me… I also happen to manage a farm that was basically the retreat for Alfred Lee Loomis during WWII, it isn’t talked about much, but he ran the rad lab at Tuxedo Park and Winston Churchill essentially sent him the cavity magnetron directly. I don’t think it would be a stretch to say he essentially invented microwave radar, which (obviously) changed the course of the entire war.
It’s totally surreal to walk around the farm and know he casually walked around the same place. There are still old encrypted hardwired telephone line plugs in the walls for the “red line” when the president or dignitaries would be entertained.
I try to explain just how historic and pivotal this guy was to visitors, but no one really cares. 🫤 History is definitely being lost before our very eyes.
Wouldn't the mortar/artillery shell that counter battery radars can detect land wayyy before you could call up the people in the wrong place at the wrong time, and tell them to take cover?? 🤔
Like, maybe if you only needed to press a button, and an automated system would blare out an "Incoming, take cover" alert in the right grid area?
But if you gotta type a text or punch in a number, you're probably already too late, no?
Cheers from a puzzled civilian :)
Wow! You said Dr Scholes was an expert and that was an understatement! That computer is an amazing highly complicated machine yet he talks it through conversationally making it very understanderable. I didn't think I'd watch the video in one sitting but I watched it straight through and will watch it again. Thanks to you both.
Yea, I'm going to have to watch it several more times just to retain the basics.
So much for Alan Turing supposedly having built the first computer.
After finding your channel a year ago I finally got a video that's only an hour old! It's taken me a year to catch up. Drach I absolutely love the work you do and if not for your channel I never would have found the battle ship New Jersey channel. WW 2 engineering and the family history of service to our great country is in my heart. Thank you for sharing your passion and knowledge!!!
The West Virginia was refitted with the same system and scored a blind fire first salvo hit at 22kyds. I am surprised Dr Scholes did not mention that.
Indeed, according to Friedman's Naval Firepower:
"In their article on US World War II battleship gunnery,
Fischer and Jurens consider this performance the best of any battleship in World War II"
-Fast Battleship Gunnery in World War II: A Gunnery Revolution by B D
Fischer and W J Jurens
At 4:15 Iowa (I think) is refuelling "Sophie X", german destroyer Schleswig-Holstein. My old commanding officer was aboard her during BALTOPS 86 and told us how awesome it was to see a battleship firing
On vacation at the beach, just about the lay down and this drops. Life is good right now. Thanks for making my day Drach!
I have been waiting for a video on the fire control system and you even picked a battleship! It's absolutely amazing the amount of variables and that this is all mechanical. Thank you for all the vids!
Mechanical AND electronic. Not digital.
Periscope has a great film breaking down analog computation and fire control computers so that even a math-phobe like me can understand.
Thanks for this Drach!
In early 1987 I was on USS Constellation (CV-64) in lieu of my senior training cruise on TSGB (Training Ship Golden Bear). USS New Jersey (BB-62) was docked astern and Connie's Training Officer arranged a tour. In 1990 during RIMPAC '90 I watched USS Missouri (BB-63) conduct a firing. We were 1500 yards off her stern. The sequence was the 5 inch mounts firing 10 rounds rapid continuous fire. Then the 16 inch guns fired forward to after, first by barrel and then by turret. The finale was a full broadside with the 16 inch and 5 inch guns.
This is steam punks ultimate expression, electro mechanical computers and all the money a government could spend absolutely brilliant
Great video! As a rifle shooter I can appreciate the endless variables that are involved. The fact that they solved this problem in the 1930’s is absolutely astounding! They were truly geniuses!
They were at LEAST as smart as the best of us are today. Which I believe applies to the people who built the pyramids as well.
@@robertmatch6550 So true.
Another marvel from WW2 was the computer augmented defense guns of the B29, very much like this MK8 system it had to calculate a ballistic firing solution that would predict the future and point the guns so their bullets and the enemy fighter would arrive at the same point in time, they were so effective it actually gave the B29 a kill to loss ratio against enemy fighter's of 11 to 1, that's actually higher then the P51's 10.2 kill to loss ratio against enemy fighter's that were used to escort B29's, a post WW2 USAAF report actually stated that because of that fact the use of P51's to escort B29's was a waste of fighter resources that could have been better utilized elsewhere, not only was that system having to make the calculations from a moving platform to a moving target but also unlike the calculations made by the MK8 which only had to keep track of things in 2 dimensions it's system had to make the calculations for both the platform and the target in 3 dimensions, and being designed for use in an aircraft meant it had to be a considerable amount smaller and lighter than the MK8 system, that system also found a home after the war when in the 50's it was used as the basis for the first 3 axis CNC machines used for automated machining production work that revolutionized the machining world.
After visiting the USS North Carolina, I always wondered how they used the analog/mechanical fire control computer. Thank You. I had to make a major move of my house, but I am still trying to find out more on the sail plan I wrote of before. Again, Thank You!
Awesome ship! My parents had a place at Sunset Beach not too far from there, we’d visit the ship often.
That main plot room made my head spin, and I feel like I’m more familiar with this stuff than the average layman.
2,000 yards is a nautical mile, vice 2,000 feet as mentioned at 8:07. But still, a great analogy. Drac is always ‘must watch’ gouge.
I find analog and mechanical computers cool, we can literally see the machine parts moving about when its computing and calculating
I'm at 2:31 and am going to make an educated guess about how fire control systems worked. Drach has another video somewhere on the basics, so I have an idea.
If we start at the simplest setting, where we have two battleships sailing on steady, parallel courses, you need five things: your speed, their speed, a tabulized chart of shell flight times (or an equation to approximate that), the range, and the distance from the rangefinder to each turret. Once you have that, you can set up a differential equation to find a solution where the enemy ship's location intersects your shells, then set up an bunch of triangles to make sure each turret is at the correct angle to hit at the point you're aiming at. You might not even need a diff. eq. for the shell-ship calculation, but you will for more complex calculations. Once you have those things, you should be able to fire and, ignoring temperature and wind differences (because WW2 technology couldnt accurately measure that downrange, anyways), you should hit.
If one or both ships are sailing on non-parallel paths, then you create a 2-D problem with x and y coordinates, and will need a diff eq and/or complicated trig, but the principles remain the same. Know where the enemy ship is and what direction and velocity theyre traveling at, the same for you, where your guns are, then set up either a series of triangles and differential equations and solve for the nearest intercept between your shell path and the enemy ship's trajectory. Then correct for wind, temperature, etc on the next salvo.
If the rumors are true that post-war fire control systems could reliably hit targets while sailing in figure-8's, it sounds like they had some sort of system of equations, similar to an autopilot system on an aircraft, that would constantly calculate the shell-ship intercept and give gun traverse and elevation angles to match.
Let's go, I was right! Might not have done a good job explaining it, but it's just Controls theory.
I remember that temperature (and so energy content) of the powder and gun wear were included into calculations.
@@kwzieleniewski Temperature shouldn't affect the energy content of the powder, because the energy comes from the chemical bonds between atoms and molecules. It might change burn rate, however, which would change the acceleration of the shell out of the barrel and the muzzle velocity.
When I was in the RN in the 1960's I worked on the UK equivalent the AFCB MK10 fitted on the Daring class. A true marvel of engineering.
By the mid-50s, the M-48 tank had a similar "iron idiot" ballistic computer that incorporated mechanical linkages to the "ears" of the coincidence rangefinder on the sides of the turret.
Behold: something we can never engineer again, nor operate correctly! Amazing what our grandparents and great-grandparents were able to do with a slide rule, graph paper, and a chalkboard.
And a world war to utterly focus all efforts on
About 1/3rd through.
Thank you Drachinifel. Idk how best gets better.
I know it now.
Never knew that about the Lunar landings. Fascinating (best Spock impression).
Indeed (raised eyebrow).
It's actually incorrect, the Apollo Guidance computer did the calculations locally. There wasn't enough bandwidth for it to be passed all the way back to Houston. Check out Curious Marc's Apollo Comms and AGC restoration videos. It was a nearer thing than anyone really knew until after the fact.
@@NullReference119 I have read through all the Apollo mission summaries and each and every one of these had a situation threatening mission or crew loss that was handled either by the crew or the flight control. It was a minimal set of tech required for the task. Hairy stuff.
when the Iowas were last in service, the Mk13 radar was the oldest extant radar in the navy still in use.
(Fire Control Part 3) Capital ships with two directors and two plotting rooms, each with its own computer, could engage two targets. The US “fast” battleships had a switchboard in their plotting rooms that allowed any director to use any mount, so that one main gun turret could be controlled by each Mk.38 director and one by one of the secondary Mk.37 directors. In this case, the Mk.37 director would by-pass its own computer to synchronize with the main armament plotting room. Some capital ships had an emergency control director in the rear of a turret (usually a super-firing turret farther above the waterline) with a simplified computer to provide director control to the gun turrets. Each mount, of course, could engage targets in local control, some navies fitting simple fire control computers at the turret officer’s station to generate a firing solution. All of this was controlled by the ship’s gunnery officer. Positioned in the conning tower or on the bridge, the gunnery officer usually had a target indicator, binoculars on a pedestal or a periscope that might communicate bearing automatically or manually. Often the gunnery officer had a spotting glass or even a rangefinder. Sometimes there was even a simplified fire control computer at his station as a backup. Modern US “fast” battleships had two primary and six secondary directors for the main armament. A spotting glass was different from a rangefinder. The spotting glass was used to detect the fall of shells and their distance from the target, not the distance from the firing ship to the target. The USN used spotting glasses in some directors, with the Mk.34 initially having a spotting glass, which was replaced from 1940 with a 15’ stereo rangefinder.
All these improvements still operated within the physical limit of the visual horizon. At one hundred feet above sea level, the curve of the earth limits visual distance to around 24,000 yards on a clear day, while the visual horizon from a point thirty feet above sea level was around 12,000 yards. This is why turret elevations generally leveled off at between fifteen- and thirty-degrees during World War 1. Most high-powered heavy guns could reach 24,000 yards at fifteen degrees, while going to twenty or thirty gave insurance against hull damage causing lists. Suddenly at the end of and after the war, navies were demanding a minimum of forty degrees elevation. What changed? The ability of the capital ship to carry and launch aircraft, aircraft that had a flight endurance of two to four hours and transceivers, that were light in weight, reliable and powerful enough to be put into an aircraft light enough to operate from a flying off platform or catapult carried aboard a capital ship. The observer could be put over the target and correct fall of shot to the maximum ballistic range of the gun. By 1935, the US Fleet could successfully engage a target ship at 30,000 yards over a smoke screen by air spotting. The IJN intended for its Battle Line to open an engagement at more than 35,000 yards using air spotting. Air spotting did have its limitations. One navy or the other had to establish air supremacy (or at least air superiority, which is why multiple aircraft were carried, to make up for losses) over the battle area. There had to be multiple aircraft to maintain spotters over the battle area. Radio procedures had to be developed to ensure ships were working with the right spotters and engaging the right targets. Aerial spotters had to be trained. Most ship’s captains were reluctant to use seaplanes if they had to recover them, since this involved slowing or even stopping their ship, making it more vulnerable to submarines. Poor visibility or bad weather would limit or prohibit the launching of aircraft. The aircraft and the aviation fuel represented a fire danger to the ship, especially when installed near ventilation systems that provided air to closed spaces like engineering or ready service
He uses a close tangent of my absolute favorite way to explain naval gunnery to people that font know how complex it can get. Wonderful way to get the message across!
It's truly amazing what the mechanical computing power of "watch technology", was able to accomplish in this ultimate iteration.
It was above and beyond the level of detail I was anticipating. Excellent presentation by the doctor and thanks to Drach for allowing us the opportunity to listen to this.
This is a fascinating topic, but it's also fascinating to think how rapidly that complex fire control for ship-to-ship fighting became to be obsolete. By the middle of WW II, large capital ships were primarily anti-aircraft battery platforms for protecting carrier task forces and artillery batteries that targeted unmoving targets on shore.
To go from being The Capital Ship to essentially a Heavy Escort for the carriers, all in the span of a few years!
A lot of that complex fire control is still needed to hit targets on shore, because the ocean doesn't magically go away - and you still want coordinated salvos that are unaffected by wind and wave. Ships move with six degrees of freedom: three linear and three rotational and you have to compensate for your own movement. It's very different firing from a ship then firing on land.
WW2 warship guns are not the same as land-based artillery: relatively little artillery on land involves guns of more than 6 inches (~155mm). They occasionally had land-based short range 8 inch guns, and there were rare systems like rail guns that were larger (but highly inaccurate compare to warship gunnery with 'ww2 modern' fire control). Warships also had much higher muzzle velocities then typical land-based guns, so even the 6 inch guns on warships tended to be far superior to the 155mm land-based artillery.
Even today, as far as I know, there is nothing available in the inventory for land-based artillery that can equal the performance of battleship gunnery. To be fair, there's no expectation of needing that performance either.
In the Osprey book on the amphibious invasion of Walcheren in 1944 - the defenses guarding the approach to the critical port of Antwerp - they mention that the Allies needed battleship-grade gunnery (meaning battleship or large monitor) because a) many defensive positions were too strong for lighter guns, and b) cruisers couldn't get close enough because of the shallow water and sand bars - the big guns had a longer range and could reach over the shallow water.
The nice thing about the battleship gunnery in these situations is that even when it didn't penetrate, it tended to suppress bunker-based guns because of the shock of the explosion affecting the humans in the bunker - which was also very demoralizing.
One definition of obsolete is 'no longer useful'. This was definitely not true of battleships in WW2 or even in the following years: a Vietnam era study showed that over 90% of carrier air missions could be accomplished more effectively and at lower cost with battleship gunnery. The WW2 Pacific Theater made carriers look really good, but that was something of a special case, because the Japanese didn't have enough trained pilots and they didn't have good anti-aircraft gunnery - so carrier air performed far better than it would have had the situation been different. In Vietnam, the anti-aircraft weapons supplied to the NVA were devastatingly effective against the available aircraft, but couldn't do anything to stop battleship shells.
Today, of course, there just isn't any need for battleships in the planning done by the nations capable of building and maintaining them. But the process of becoming 'no longer useful' actually took quite a long time.
@@bluelemming5296 I fully appreciate that. My point is that a lot of the design requirements were based on two moving objects and for the time this was the ultimate in high tech. But given that billions were spent no only fire control but also on other technology and construction methods based on the age-old concept that naval battles were fought and won by ship-to-ship action, it's fascinating that very much of it was wasted because the development of air power and aircraft carriers so fundamentally changed naval warfare.
@@emmgeevideo Was it wasted? I'd say not at all - in fact it was a fantastic investment.
The Germans had battleships and cruisers: Scharnhorst and Gneisenau demonstrated that they could sneak through the stormy expanses of the North Atlantic without detection and surprise convoys. On two separate occasions, they encountered a convoy guarded by a battleship - and despite having 2 to 1 odds in their favor, the German battleships declined combat.
A big convoy might carry a billion dollars in goods in today's money. The cost to replace the close escort, the merchant ships, and the crews could exceed one billion dollars. The cost of a single North Carolina class battleship is 1.5 billion dollars in today's money.
In short, those defending battleships more than paid for their cost of construction in a single encounter - and they didn't have to fire a shot - the best kind of victory. Sun Tsu would have been impressed.
Both RN and US Battleships were used on occasion in convoy escort roles. Usually they would use the battleships as distant cover, unless they knew a raider was out in which case the ship might be placed with the convoy. These practices were common, for example, for the Arctic Convoys. USS Washington was one US battleship used in the distant cover role.
The North Atlantic is notorious for stormy weather. In some seasons, the weather is bad three days out four on average - and on occasion can stay bad for weeks at a time. There was never any guarantee that WW2 carriers could conduct flight operations - and that made the raider threat something that couldn't be reliably countered by carriers except in the summer. But the Arctic Convoys couldn't run in the summer, because it was too easy for German land-based air to find and destroy them: just like the raiders, these convoys needed the shelter provided by bad weather.
We know the supplies for the Soviet Union were critical. Even before the US got involved, Britain was sending tanks and aircraft - and we know they were played an important role in the Battle of Moscow because the Soviet units with this equipment received commendations.
The cost of having the Soviet Union fall out of the war vastly exceeded the cost of the entire USN and RN complement of battleships. So here again we see a huge return on the battleship investment.
In addition to distant cover roles, battleships were also used when possible to directly escort troop convoys - a critical task. To put this in perspective, the battle of 'Bloody Tarawa' cost the lives of 1009 US marines over three days of intense combat. In comparison, when the transport HMT Rohna was lost to air attack in the Med, 1138 people died in about an hour. That's only one transport: it typically took 10-20 transports just to carry one infantry division and it's equipment (depending upon the size of the ships and the amount of equipment).
The potential loss of life was so high should a troop convoy be lost that it fully justified the use of a battleship to deter an enemy raider - and that ship more than paid for itself even if no combat at all occurred.
So money was not wasted on battleships, they were actually a great investment.
You can see the advantage of guided weapons,that can adjust course in flight, from watching a video like this. Guided weapons also don't have to fly a predictable course,so they can be harder to trace back to the source. Firing long range artillery that follows a ballistic path provides away to calculate your exact position when the projectile launched.
Wow! Dr. Scholes spoke for the entire hour and 11 minutes, and I listened to it all. And then there's the comments which add even more value to a fascinating topic. Thanks!
PS, Drach I'll see you at the HNSA symposium.
I've been looking forward to this video since I heard you filmed it. Thanks Drach for another excellent video!
This whole presentation was mind bogglingly amazing! Several times I had to stop, back up, and relisten to what that Gentleman had said to even have a basic grasp of what he had just said! It took me over 2 hours get through this hour long presentation! Amazing!
Awwwwwwww!!!!! I like telling my guests on WISKY that the computer was built Ford tough ;-).
Cousin survives Pearl Harbor on USS Maryland as firecontrolman standing atop the cage mast watching for the fall of shot. Went to work for RCA helped develop the Aegis weapons system told me after spending time on Iowa during Korea that those 4 ships were the ultimate weapons system and later said they would be immune to a electromagnet pulse.
Hey, I was IN that plotting room last year XD
Honestly after seeing so much content about it from you and the NJBM channel, I was glad I got to go in person. Very cool...it's smaller than I thought it would be :D
Listening to these explanations makes you appreciate even more the genius of Admiral Ching Lee!
I would love to see a Wednesday special for the targeting-computers aboard WWII US submarines.
Something to enjoy with my coffee this morning, so awesome.
Can you imagine how much space is occupied by the manuals and other documentation for these fire control systems and their components? There would have to be people trained to update and care for these manuals. Then there is the matter of spare parts kept to maintain the system. The whole thing is mind boggling. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this episode.
Put it in bookcases around the computer room and you have an additional layer of decent armor 😂
You know what I would love to see someone design? A modern version of an electro-mechanical fire control system and compare it to what was made back when the Iowas were in service. Also would love to see someone build their own version of the Iowas computers except change nothing but update to modern tolerance specifications for as tight tolerances in the movable parts. Compare that to the originals to get an idea of just how much more accurate you could get purely with modern manufacturing and tolerancing
I'm not sure this automatic train and elevation keeping was unique to the USN. I remember having read Bismarck's fire control system having that capability but I might be wrong since it's been ages since I read Kkpt. von Müllenheim's book and back then I had no idea about WW2 artillery fire control. Have to dig it out.
I swear, the fact a handful of YT contributors can produce better historical content than most professional organisations says it all . Drachinfel, Mark Felton, Lazerpig, History of Everything, Animarchiy. They constantly produce better content than *any* ‘professional’ organisation of the last few years.The fact that all of these guys are given any funds is all you need to know.
Comparing someone to Felton - is that a compliment?
@@R5DW It’s meant to be. Mark is the Top Tier, but the rest do put in the effort to produce content for their fans and contributors. My point was that all of these people produce content that is far above that we get from most professional media organisations.
@@NickJohnCoop Mark is definitively NOT in "the top tier" he's a confirmed serial plagarist, and generally crap at getting the facts right (e.g., search "Mark Felton Panzermuseum")
Putting drach in the same category as Mark Felton is an insult to drach.
@@NickJohnCoop Sorry, but at least in my opinion, Mark Felton is not top tier. I'm no expert but there areas where my knowledge is pretty good, and I've spotted fairly obvious errors. His presentation is too "The most dangerous", "The most daring" etc etc for me. On top of that I've seen a number of people making a pretty convincing argument that at least some of his output is basically a copy and paste of other peoples work.
I gave up on him a while ago.
Felton, Lazerpig, Animarchiy....that's uh....quite a list there lol.
hey, im an old FCC this video is for me
I was an FC2. I haven't started watching it yet but it will be interesting comparing the info to what was taught in FC "A" School.
AT LAST! A video to explain what I've wanted to know for ten years!
what get's me is that Gunnery officers had to actually understand this. Ye gods!
I'll finally be seeing New Jersey in a few days and am super excited
"Karate TMA"
That's what we called doing target motion analysis with your hands.
I'm curious on how this fire control compared to contemporary fire control in say, The Royal Navy.
For what it's worth, Australian author and former RN/RAN WW2 destroyer gunnery officer JE MacDonnell seemed convinced in his books (historical naval fiction that drew from his experience during the war) that the latest RN destroyers of his era had gunnery fire control every bit as good if not better than the USN destroyers. Whether he was actually right is an open question.
I think it would be really hard to re-examine that question in detail today. There's probably all kinds of 'tribal knowledge' that's lost, and a lot of stuff was classified - who knows how much of it survives and is still available?
This raises questions about source accuracy - we just don't know how good our sources are so it's difficult to draw conclusions from them with much confidence in the results. I see a lot of 'appeal to authority' on questions where it would be much better to have actual measurement data on forums like this one - and when we do have measurement data it often falls far short of anything a scientist or engineer would consider reliable.
We do have actual declassified gunnery training results for the US fast battleships - you can read about that in Warship International 2005-2006. It's a pretty nice data set because it breaks out firing with and without radar, or using an aerial spotter, so you get some feel for how the different approaches compare. I don't think anybody has found similiar data for the RN or for smaller ships - it would be really cool if they did. I have hope that maybe more data will come out as we get closer to 100 years.
To my eyes, that data set shows that experience mattered - good shooting wasn't just a matter of 'plug and play'.
Could You please address how effective this system over all would be against say…. Torpedo boats?
Asking for a friend
Kamchatka, perhaps?
@@Kamina1703 …that’s the type of questions a torpedo boat would ask….
Love the work drach, im really interested if you think the british would have been better off at jutland with german size guns but reliable fuses rather than the slightly larger but famously unreliable fused shells they actually used
Thanks Drach, been awaiting this one with bated breath.
Quite honestly, I think this may be your finest ever video. Utterly fascinating.
I've read that USS Massachusetts had the rare experience of actually using its spotter aircraft to correct fire at a stationary target (a French battleship moored in a harbor in what is now Algeria).
This was awesome, I could listen to Both of you all day. I have an artefact to donate. it is the handle off a U-Boat. My Step Father took it off U-853, I am do not condone the removal of anything from a war grave, but the Jeannie back can not be put back in the Bottle.
Makes the sinking of the Hood by the Bismarck years before a lot of this technology more remarkable.
Insane engineering for 80 years ago.
Great video, Drach, and thank you Dr. Scholes! While most comparisons of gun ships compare speed, armor, and firepower, I think it's important to remember how vitally important the other technologies are, especially the fire control systems. For example, people always compare the Iowas to the Yamatos in fantasy matchups, but do they factor in the differences in radar, computers, and precision of the gun-pointing mechanisms? I'd like to see you talk about the Japanese fire control tech in a future video (and German, Italian, etc. as well).
You can find a lot of good information in the article Fast Battleship Gunnery during World War II: A Gunnery Revolution: Part I/II, in two parts, in Warships International (2005/2006), including a comparison of actual shooting results against a moving Yamato sized target with optical versus radar versus spotter, and how 'fall of shot' systems work (really important!).
The article title basically gives a lot away.
The data these articles are based on was declassified in the early 2000s. It completely invalidates a lot of the information found in older sources, including a well known but wrong study a lot of people like to cite - which the article discusses.
A lot of people are still not up to date on this topic - and for that matter a lot of web sites are not up to date - so their fantasy matchups are not based on valid information.
It gets worse.
Fantasy matchups also tend to assume ships are fighting in a flat featureless mathematical space, where ships don't roll, pitch, or yaw -- and hence where armor angles and shell impact angles are fixed to the values shown in some table based on mathematical calculations whose assumptions are never given. These tables aren't based on measurement because measurement implies a distribution, not a single exact value. Even with measurement, you need to know a lot before you can conclude the measurement seems reasonable. Scientists typically want at least 30 measurements before they consider something worth talking about. If ship X scores a single hit at range Y in a particular battle, that's one measurement: how do we differentiate a lucky hit from a skilled hit with only one measurement? The answer is: We Can't.
As the current video makes clear, real fire control systems have to deal with all sorts of complexity that just doesn't exist in the typical fantasy matchup: the real world is not a computer game. What may not be clear is that the current video only scratches the surface.
For example, damage to ships in the real world tends to be highly non-linear, even chaotic. This causes people to completely fail to understand that linear models of things like armor thickness are limited in what they can tell us about real world performance. It also messes up people's probability estimates really badly: they make linear assumptions about things that are not - historically speaking - even remotely linear. A lot of really unexpected and hard to predict stuff happens in the real world, such as the hit from Warspite that took out an engine room without penetrating the armor - because the hit started a fire which created smoke and poisonous gas that got sucked through the ventilation into the engine room, forcing it to be evacuated. Armor does not always help.
Making bad assumptions and failing to understand these fundamental 'critical thinking and evaluation of evidence' issues lead a lot of people to jump to conclusions that have no foundation. That makes most of the fantasy matchup discussions a complete waste of time.
If you local library doesn't have access to this journal, there are ways to get free reading access to a certain number of articles per month for journals like Warship International via the Web: do a search.
OUTSTANDING! Mahalo
(Fire Control Part 5) amounts of generated power, were less than fully integrated into the fire control system and gunnery doctrine, and were less than completely reliable. Radar systems often “crashed” from the shock of the fires from their own ships. Few officers were trained in their use or understood their advantages and limitations. The radar scopes and operators were often separate from the directors and even the plotting room, resulting in operators taken ranges and bearings on the wrong target, as the early wide beam radars often presented multiple returns. Targets would appear and disappear from scopes, with operators and gunnery officers believing the target had sunk, and then would engage a “new” target some minutes later as the target reappeared. Still, all things considered, the Mark 3 (FC) fire control radar operating at 40cm could give accurate ranges to 24,000 yards and even spot shell splashes at 12,000 yards. Higher frequencies, more power and tighter beams, along with better integration into the fire control system resulted in performances unthinkable in pre-radar navies. In October 1944, three modernized older (pre-1937) US battleships detected a Japanese battleship at 40,000 yards at night with surface search radar (SG-1, 10cm), acquired and tracked it from 35,000 yards (with Mark 8 Mod.3 FCR, 10cm) and had a firing solution ready by 30,000 yards (using the Mk.34 director, Mk.VIII range keeper, the Mk.41 stable vertical and RPC). In comparison, the Japanese battleship’s maximum detection range was 30,000 yards with the Type 22 10cm radar, while the maximum effective night engagement range was 15,000 yards using illumination rounds.
In 1939, the latest Japanese, American and British capital ship main gunnery fire control systems were basically equal in effectiveness. The Japanese FCS in their capital ships and heavy cruisers was more manually intensive in operation, especially as they inserted an additional manually operated optical target tracker into the loop. The least effective Japanese FCS was in their old light cruisers and destroyers. The best US systems were in the latest heavy and light cruisers, grading down to the FCS on the “California”, “New York”, and “Arkansas” class capital ships, which were at least a generation behind the latest Japanese FCS. The best British system were on its newest cruisers and the latest rebuilt battleships and battle cruiser. From there it graded down, HMS Hood and the unmodernized “R” class battleships having the least capable capital ship FCS, and the old WW1 light cruisers having barely any FCS at all. The Japanese pulled ahead slightly with the Type 98 FCS introduced in IJNS Hiei in 1940, but the US took the lead in 1941 with the Mk.38 FCD/Mk.VIII range keeper/Mk.52 stable vertical/RPC FCS and kept it, adding Mark 3, then Mark 8 and finally Mark 13 FCR.
There is a WWII submarine computer game called Silent Hunter 4. The game simulates the Torpedo Data Computer. The action of this computer appears to be a much smaller version of what the battleships use. Since there is no concern about elevation with torpedos. Both the US submarine and the enemy vessel to attack could be at almost any heading and the computer would attempt to track a good angle for the torpedo.
Links to some of Dr. Scholes published works?
Thanks! I have been waiting for this one for a loooong time
For anyone really interested in this topic, Naval Firepower by Norman Friedman is a good read.
Naval Surface Fire Control (Part 1) - This may be the time to discuss the (ballistic) range of the guns which represented the reason for the existence of battleships. The data usually seen is the maximum ballistic range at maximum elevation of a typical mounting for a new gun with the maximum powder charge, at the accepted internal chamber temperature, used with the standard shell. Range, of course, falls off as the elevation of the mounting decreases, which requires the reader to know the actual maximum elevation of the mount in question. For example, some references indicate that the two aft turrets in the “Fuso” class may have only elevated to 33 or 35 degrees (evidently there was insufficient depth in the hull at that point to lower the trunnions and turntable), while the other turrets elevated to 43 degrees after the major rebuild in 1930-35, which elevation produces the maximum new gun range of 38,700 yards for the gun (36cm Type 41) in question. The shells from the aft two turrets would, therefor, only reach a maximum range of around 35,000 yards. Next, the rifling in guns wore down with service, which allowed gases to escape around the shell and reducing both initial velocity and the spin placed on the shell. This resulted in a lower maximum range and less accuracy at all ranges. The RN had a policy of maintaining equivalent wear conditions for each gun on a capital ship to ensure uniformity of performance of a salvo, a policy which it found difficult to apply to the “Nelson” class due to problems with the 16 inch Mark I guns. The powder charge could be varied with different shells to reduce wear when the tactical situation allowed. The USN developed reduced charges for their High Capacity (HC) shells used in their heavy and medium guns which decreased range and penetration, but also minimized wear as US battleships shot off hundreds of HC shells in pre-landing preparations and post-landing fire support. Temperature in the chamber could create performance variations since new gun performance parameters were achieved at specific chamber temperatures. If the chamber were hotter or colder, the powder would burn faster or slower, changing the velocity of the shell. The range also varied by shell. The US 16”/45 Mark 1 fired a 2,240lbs AP shell that ranged farther at a particular elevation than the 1,900lbs HC shell which lost velocity faster over the ballistic arc to the target. All of this capability was directed by a fire control system that was designed to place sufficient shells into an area to ensure at least some hit a target. The initial fire control system, which remained in place for simpler weapons, was for the gunner, or sometimes the trainer and pointer, to look through a sight, with or without optical enhancement, decide when the target was in range and adjust for the movement of his ship and the target to decide when to fire. The effectiveness of this system limited battle ranges to no more than three thousand yards or even less. In 1898, the US Fleet destroyed two separate Spanish forces at Manila and Santiago, despite an absolutely abysmal hit rate. As guns became more powerful, it became more difficult to armor ships against their capabilities at close range, and with the existence and improvement of the torpedo, this drove engagement ranges out beyond three thousand yards and more. New systems were needed, and Scott in the RN and Fiske in the USN advocated and succeeded in implementing the director system. A position high in the ship contained a gunnery officer, several ratings, optical devices and communications equipment. The director would determine the bearing of the target, the optical rangefinder would determine the current range, while the other data needed was estimated. This data was own ship speed, angle of bearing, rate of change and roll along with the speed, range, bearing, angle of presentation and rate of change of the
I realize that this is outside the scope of this video, but I would love to see a follow on video discussing the addition of the Mark 48 Shore Bombardment Computer in the plotting rooms of USN battleships and cruisers post-WWII.
A lot of people don’t realise a British island is named after New Jersey which of course is an acronym for “now everyone was just eagerly replying salvoing everyone yet”. Made a mess of them.
A vid over 1h long by Drachinifel = instant like =]
Absolutely awesome video. Thanks for bringing him to us Drach.
Fire Control Part 4) ammunition and torpedoes. Aircraft and catapults could limit the elevation and train of guns or might even be blown off the ship by gun overpressure when firing over or near the catapults.
Another development coming out of the Great War was concentration of fire by divisions or groups of capital ships or cruisers. Using multiple ships would generate a larger “danger zone” around the target, ensuring hits despite any maneuvers it might employ. The British especially developed and trained on methods of coordinating the fire of multiple ships on a single target. Basically, one ship would control the firing solution and radio the solution to its mates, who would adjust the solution slightly for range and lead on the target. When the correct solution was reached, the ship which was hitting radioed its solution to the others. In some cases, not all the ships in the division could “see” the target. Air spotting could be integrated into this system. The best method involved ships with the same guns and turrets, which simplified generating firing solutions. One method adopted to identify shell splashes by ship was the use of colored dye in the ballistic shield which added color to shell splashes. Ships were assigned a specific color to identify their splashes from other ships in a battle line engagement.
Night engagements had their own limits. A clear night, with still winds and waters, and a full moon, especially if it was behind the target, could provide sufficient light to engage to the visual horizon. When visibility dropped off, navies had to rely on star shells, flares, and searchlights. Star shells and parachute flares had to be placed behind the target to silhouette it, and the illumination shells were lighter, less well shaped and fired with smaller charges and at lower velocities. The maximum range for illumination rounds fired from heavy guns (15.5cm to 8”) was about 22,000 yards, with normal maximum ranges for medium guns (6”) being between 12,000 and 15,000 yards. Searchlights could reach out to 9,000 yards. A target’s gun flashes and any fires aboard a ship could help determine bearing and speed, but spotting required being able to see the shell splashes. Some navies successfully developed air dropped flares, but aerial spotting was not successfully used at night. Some navies investigated active infrared night vision, but the only thing that came out of it was the IJN’s infrared visual signaling system. The Japanese and the British were the most practiced navies at night combat with superior searchlights, optics, star shells and parachute flares. What changed things was radar. The USN, especially cruisers, did practice night combat but the scenarios involved protecting the battle line, not substituting for one. Night combat for USN battleships was usually limited to the use of secondary armament to drive off destroyers. Then there was the ad hoc nature of most of the USN surface action groups thrown into the “meat grinder” in and around the Solomons Islands in 1942-43.
The radar horizon from one hundred feet above sea level is 30,000 to 40,000 yards, depending on conditions. Early fire control radars could detect out to these ranges, but with their low frequencies, low power, and wide beams, they often couldn’t determine bearing sufficiently to acquire and track a target consistently beyond 30,000 yards. Sometimes the effective range for target acquisition, tracking and engagement was less than 20,000 yards, which wasn’t much of an improvement over visual systems like flares, star shell and searchlights, though radar did not give your position away, at least not until you opened fire or until electronic surveillance systems were developed. The early designs of radar were heavy, required unanticipated
Amazing to see all the equipment but I'm honestly way too dumb for any of this lol
When I went through Fire Controlman A School we only covered this on a superficial level when discussing the Fire Control problem, modern FC radars can generate a solution in a single 28ms clock cycle or faster.
Thanks for a deep look into these systems, and the accompanying photos are just awesome!
Very impressive presentation.
The gentleman's (Dr. John Scholes) brilliant commentary on the excellence of the American fire control system may be technically true. However, one can't forget the many successful hits during the Battle of Jutland or the successful performance of the Bismarck on HMS Hood. Who knows what kind of equipment went down with IJN Yamato and what was devised for the English, Italian and French battleships? God visits mankind with many gifts to many places.
" Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank Soil to a plash? Toads in a poison’d tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage- " - Browning
This was absolutely awesome.
Superb lecture.
These systems, to me, are the most incredible feats of mankind. All analog. Unbelievable.
(Fire Control Part 2) target. The guns would fire on directions from the gunnery officer in the director who could see the target and wasn’t blinded when the guns fired. Starting with a simple optically enhanced target indicator, the next step was adding range finders either at the director, at a position nearby or at the gun mounts. I won’t get into the difference between coincidence and stereo rangefinders, except to say that stereo rangefinders were more accurate but more difficult to use and became universal among navies. At first these rangefinders had a base length (the distance between each optical point at each end of the device) of three feet or so, but it was realized that the longer the base, the more accurate the range taken by the operator. Some rangefinders mounted in turrets came to be over fifty feet in length. Next, instruments were developed to process the data and produce a firing solution which could be communicated to the mounts. The director became more crowded (and less efficient) and the development of sound and electrically powered telephones and data transmission by wire allowed both better coordination between the director and the mounts but also allowed the movement of much of the personnel and instruments involved in receiving data and generating firing solutions into a better protected position in the hull. In the 1930s, a series of evolutionary steps caused a revolution in fire control. The first was the improvement in fire control solution mechanism with the introduction of mechanical analog computers. Initially, the computer assisted the gunnery team using actual manual plots to generate firing solutions. Such computers were designated “range keepers” in the USN. Eventually, all navies had manually operated mechanical analog computers using a system of handles, cams, wheels, rods and levers to input all required data, including ballistic wear and atmospheric conditions, in order to calculate all the necessary outputs needed to generate a firing solution (it should be noted that the Soviets were still using mechanical analog computers in the 1970s to generate firing solutions for anti-ship missiles). Some of these computers later in the period were electro-mechanical systems, while by 1941 the USN was developing electrically driven computers which could, at first, be easily modified to handle a different caliber and then computers that could handle multiple calibers in the same system. In the later, more capable computers, the data generated by the director, the rangefinders, and the mounts, along with ship speed and bearing, were automatically fed to the computer, which generated a firing solution which was then fed directly to the turrets and guns through “pointers” in the sights of the trainer and layer, and in some navies, the computer automatically drove the mounts to the proper train and elevation through remote power control. The USN integrated a “stable vertical”, a device using gyroscopes to maintain an “artificial” horizon and correcting for roll and own ship’s rate of change, which directly fed data into the computer, in place of a manually operated cross-sight in the director. This allowed the firing ship to maneuver and to engage a turning target. Firing solutions could now be generated in a few minutes, in some cases, in seconds. Almost all capital ships had two directors, a primary forward at the highest possible level and a secondary, often at a lower position. Fire control could be switched over to the secondary director, though this could take several minutes (or more, up to 30 minutes, for older systems which required returning all the turrets to zero/180 degrees to reset the synchronizing motors), depending on the transmission system used. One advantage the US and German ships had was the use of AC electrical devices which produced finer and more accurate transmission of data, synchronization within the fire control system and use of RPC.
I wonder how they computed for turret 1 after they removed its range finders because they where always getting smash in from taking water over the bow.
All three turrets were continuously controlled by the central fire control system. On the Iowa class, the range finding was done by one if two high mounted range finders on the superstructure of the ship. A range finder and computer in each individual turret were there as back ups in case central fire control was unavailable. The turrets could also communicate between one another if needed. There was also a back up central fire control system in another part of the ship. In short, rendering an Iowa class battleship unable to fire it's main battery with accuracy was very difficult.
@stargazer5784 actually no. The individual turrets also had there own directors and range finders so they could operate independently if need be. You really should watch some videos on the New Jersey or Iowa. The gun crews have proven they can land accurate fire with out the direct input from the computer director. Or did you not watch this whole video?
I feel like I have been through an abreavaited US navy fire control class. I spent a few years as a navy fire control tech. I had my system so tweaked in that I could put a 3-inch round into a minivan at 8 miles. (I was on an ffg. I only had a 3-inch gun. )
What are the circumstances where you would want to fire 16"/45 ballistic profile shots from the 16"/50 rifles?
@@Colonel_Overkill long distance where hits to deck armour are more likely, the 16"/45 has lower MV and thus the angle of fall for a given range will be steeper.
Part of the USN's (over) obsession with long range gunnery. Reality had battleships generally engaging at shorter ranges, though not exclusively.
8:35 guess this photo is now released anyway....
Uh... I hate to be that guy, but uh, during the telling of the analogy concerning two passing cars, 2000 feet isn't a nautical mile. 200 ft. x100=20,000 ft. which is closer to about 6500 yards, not 9000. Just sayin. Still a fascinating video. Thx Drach.
Some people get a bit flustered when speaking in front of an audience, or a camera. You weren't the only person to notice.
I just wondered: Nowadays we have Excalibur rounds, finding their target via GPS. What would happen if the USN deployed a battleship with such "through the enemy's keyhole" 16'' shells?
They would need to have a way of continually updating the GPS coordinates that the shell was using to match the position of the target ship. Excalibur type shells are really only useful against static targets, or occasionally moving targets that you know are going to be at a specific point (e.g. a crossroads or bridge) at a predictable time.
Simple. Its just shooting skeet while riding on a flatbed at a clay pigeon a few miles away. No problem. This tech. was/is truly awesome. I toured the Mass and got this lowdown there. May have been from this same cat.
51:53 The camera actually caught one of the shells leaving the gun. 😊
This guy is a modern marvel .
I may be incorrect, but it’s my understanding, when the Iowas were brought back in the early 90s. There was no digital computer that had the ability to match the 1940s-era DC gear already installed.
Myth, digital pocket calculators from that era could easily do all the mathematics faster. Normal PCs have already been on the market for more than a decade. If there were any issues, it was connecting all that digital electronics to analog/mechanical actuators, that interface had to be custom made. It's like taking a modern ferrari engine and putting it into horse carriage instead of horses, not necessary easy task but it doesn't mean horses are better :)
Best thing about being in gun plot- air conditioning. Those computers, gyros and radar consoles had to be kept cool. Us FC's didn't break a sweat while the GM's worked their proverbials off in uncomfortable conditions.